Note the time in this picture. 5:44am. I was on my way to work, battling the left overs of the snow that had fallen all day the day before (apparently mother nature did not get the memo that it's spring).
I went to work as planned and proceeded to distribute clothes through out the building.
After lunch I was working on my afternoon load (hanging up clothes that had been worn through the day and washed right before lunch), when my watch started vibrating alerting me of the call coming in.
Now I want to say that I never answer my phone when I'm at work. I'm not allowed to have it in the laundry room but a lot of the time on weekends I will just throw my purse back there and not deal with my locker. It sits there until lunch. No harm done.
But this time, when I saw D's number pop up on my watch, I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. He never calls me at work. Just like I don't call him at work. We will text if we need to let the other one know something before we get off work. That way we can check it when we have a minute and it's not ringing and driving the person crazy while we're busy. I answered and the first thing he said was the neighbors house is about to catch ours on fire, so I think you should come home totally calm.
I left work early (which I felt bad about because I needed to finish hanging stuff up and do some other small stuff) and hurried home. I vlogged for anyone who might want to watch that.
When I got close to my part of town, I could see the smoke coming from my street. Huge clouds of billowy grey smoke. My heart totally sank. I had no idea if I would even have a home to see when I rounded the last corner. The streets were blocked off so I pulled up about a block away and parked my car and pulled out my camera.
My house is the one on the opposite side of the one burning obviously.
D said when I was finally able to get to him that him and Dawn had been sitting in the living room watching TV when she said she smelled a camp fire. He thought nothing of it since they had been working on the upstairs of this house for a month or so now. He figured they were burning something in the back yard. Then Gaige came running down the stairs saying the neighbors house is on fire, and when D opened up the blind to see what was happening, he just saw a wall of orange. The window was too hot to touch and by the time he got the kids and pets out of the house the internal temp of the house was 86*.
It was only a few minutes between when people started calling 911 to when they actually arrived (we live up the street from both the fire station and the police station) and it was completely engulfed when they got there. Later we found out that when the fire department arrived they quickly sprayed our house down to cool it and ensure that it didn't catch fire also.
The fire ended up jumping to the neighbor on the other side though. Had the wind been blowing the other direction...I would not be sitting in my house writing this right now.
It's a complete miracle that we didn't lose our house too.
Speaking of miracles. D was supposed to go on a bike trip with his friend from work that same morning. The kids would have been home by themselves. Someone was looking out for this house and my kids that day.
I'm counting my blessings right now folks. And thanking God that all we got was a little shingle damage. My heart goes out to the other two families who lost everything though. I just can not imagine.
-Kristin
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